Book: Matthew

Obedience to God is the only way to true happiness. But in order to trust and obey God, we must first abandon our pride and admit that we are no longer going to do things “our way.” Only when we begin boast in the Lord and not in ourselves will we know the joy of salvation and help others to find their way to God.

What can the US debt ceiling teach us about the Christian life? It demonstrates the attitude of our wider culture, even among Christians. We have no desire to do the hard work of self-examination and repentance. We don’t want to embrace the struggle of a life of holiness, following Christ. We just want more stuff! We want to be comfortable, and we don’t want to be reminded that we must be holy, just as God is holy.

The Epiphany has not ended; it shines forth to this day, radiating out from the day of Christ’s Incarnation; it is the very reason we as Gentiles can share in the riches of Christ’s inheritance. This means that we who have received this light have the responsibility to both continually seek its source and reflect it so that others may do the same.

There are no words given to Saint Joseph in all of Scripture, and yet, Joseph is the greatest example of a husband and father in all of humanity. Indeed, Joseph is the most important man who ever lived (apart from Christ). He is here to prove that a good man doesn’t need attention, he doesn’t need to say many words, he doesn’t need to be a superhero. A good man needs to be a righteous man. May we all imitate his uprightness of life and his obedience to God’s commands.

We are not very good at being patient. As devout Christians, we really should be wanting Jesus to return, to judge the living and the dead, being patience while living among a world that hates us. What we shouldn’t be doing is wishing for Jesus to wait until after our lifetimes, as if our own plans are more important than God’s plan of salvation! When the LORD comes should not be our concern; it should be how we prepare for the LORD’s return!

We need Advent to remind us of these responsibilities as we wait for Christ to return. And for that reason, Andrew is the perfect saint to start the Advent season. He also (unsurprisingly) embodies the call of John the Baptist in today’s Gospel reading for the second Sunday of Advent to “bear fruit in keeping with repentance.”

We need to constantly realize that in Christ, we are a new creation. We need to be reminded of this truth by, and for, each other. Christ gives us grace anew so that we are equal to the task of fighting back the darkness, even when the odds and circumstances seem overwhelming. Like Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, and many other heroes who went before us, we must put on the full armor of God in the battle against evil.

Like many holidays in America, the meaning of Thanksgiving has been totally lost by the majority of Americans. Thanksgiving only has meaning when you know what you’re thankful for, to whom you are thankful, and why you are thankful. Christians must be the first to give thanks to God, even when everything in life goes wrong.

For every Saint whose name we remember, there are a thousand more who silently served and suffered for the sake of the Gospel, and they are as much responsible for the advance of the Gospel as the great heroes of the faith whom we celebrate. We forget this so easily, and this is precisely why we need the heroes of the faith – to encourage us in the ordinary work of Sainthood. The ordinary life is a beautiful thing, because God ordains the ordinary to accomplish His divine and perfect Will.